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| Subject: Importance of planning 5 Posted elsewhere | |
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Author: Allen Currie |
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Date Posted: 16:50:29 04/03/13 Wed The importance of planning 5 A few years into my planning efforts, I finally realized that all my work was theoretical. True I had lived on a dirt poor farm, AND during the dirty 30’s so I knew some of the problems and solutions I was dealing with. More so than most people alive today. Still, I knew that theoretical was very prone to mistakes. I decided to move out to my camp, and immediately began to find mistakes. I had been accumulating “stuff” that I thought would be useful in commercial storage. I wanted to be rid of that constant storage expense. I moved everything from the storage unit to the 40 foot container that I was planning for my “house.”. Filled a fairly big percentage of the container. Then I realized that I couldn’t build false walls and insulate inside the container with all that stuff in there. I couldn’t move much of it outside into the rain, My plan to build barns and call them storage sheds was becoming real. Building using only one person is very much more inefficient than with two or more. Say you have a 5/8 panel of chipboard. It is fairly heavy, but one person can manage it. You want to get it tight under your rafters to stop insects. You get it tight, pick up a nail in one hand, a hammer in the other, and the darned thing always slips at least a little. Finally you have to build something, a sort of shelf, under it to hold it up so you can nail the chipboard in place. Two men could easily do it in half an hour or less. One man can spend five to six hours fiddling with it. Remember, I have no electricity or other useful things there. I don’t want to hire anyone who is going to know where my weaknesses are or even where it is located. I had very severely underestimated the time I needed. Then along came government with changes in the rules. The rule changes pretty much shot my first summer. One barn completed with only plastic sheeting over the roof, no shingles, no insulation or interior walls. Moreover, when I had been researching for best place I had noticed a tectonic fault line very close. I couldn’t find any mention of earthquake on it, ever. I decided it was pretty dormant. I hadn’t been there two months when we got a 3.4 quake. Not big in terms of California, the Philippines, or Japan but pointed out the shortcomings of my theories. In the spring I had come in earlier than the previous year with my four wheel drive vehicle. I got about half way to the camp along this skidoo trail from the nearest so called road, and hit a sink hole, literally quicksand. I spent over a week jacking, digging and “come alonging” my way out of this mess. Then three days filling in the holes that I had made. It was nearly a month before it dried enough that I could get in and out. Up here you top up the gas tank every chance you get, AND carry one or two jerry cans of gas plus tools and supplies at all times. Gas stations and stores are few and very far between. I thought I would like to over winter that fall, so I began to cut and split firewood. I built another sledge to insure the firewood would dry and stacked my firewood on it. I also transported in enough shingles and lumber to finish the second “storehouse”/barn. By now I was half way through July, so I finished my first barn and started on my second. I also found a quite straight tree to cut and skin the bark off for a fifty foot skid under my container. Snaking a 50 foot tree through the bush by hand is not easy or fun. By late September I had moved a lot of “stuff” from the container to the “Barns” by wheel barrow. Not all, but I had some room to work. I was pretty sour about the quality of my planning, particularly not having thought to install steel skids under the container, and to cut windows while it was back in civilization. While the container was light I decided to jack it up so I could get my skids under it. I got some large cement building blocks, and started going around the container from corner to corner with my 20 ton jack, raising the container about half an inch per set till I could get some blocks in the open space at each corner. It seemed a bit tippy and it slewed around, mostly off the blocks. I swore a lot and manhandled/jacked it back to where It should be. I thought that once I got it set that the weight would keep it in place. In the end I bought a number of 4X4 wood timbers and cross stacked them to make a two foot by three crib which was much more stable. We got our first snow. I puttered around securing the site and my gardens for winter for a couple of weeks. I figured at worst I could survive if I got stuck in camp, but it would be uncomfortable with no insulation in place. I did have 15 of these 18 litre fountain plastic jugs as potable water, a supply of things like spaghetti, which would have been boring but filling, my two woodstoves, sleeping bags, etc. It turned out that the snow came and went, came and went. The roads were horrendous. I went to a nearby motel (50+ km) and arranged a fairly reasonable rent so I could do a penultimate edit on my novel, “Operation Phoenix” and begin to consider how to market it. The novel is available as a download, hard copy, and a free sample read at www.AllenCurrie.ca It discusses, at a New York location, conditions that history says will develop. Allen [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |